>Studies on patients with localised brain damage are helping to answer part of this question. When people have lesions in the prefrontal cortex – the outermost layer of the front part the brain – they appear to be much more prone to following orders than the general population.<p>WOW, that's going to come in handy when some government decides to weaponize it.
> Assigning negative term after term to harmless groups of people was intended to be emotionally wearing and to make most participants feel uncomfortable. Plenty dropped out as it got more intense. For those who carried on, it was a belief that they were contributing to something important – a rigorous scientific study – that drove them to push through.<p>It's a pretty sloppy to assume that they believed this because of an authority figure.
I'm not sure we can do much to understand the role of authority without understanding the role of conditioning in what makes people act.<p>For instance, why are most schools so regimented and rule-rich? For efficiency, certainly, but not all school rules increased efficiency. I would guess some of the rules exist to reinforce obedience to the other rules.
> <i>Being able to stand up to authority doesn’t hinge on bravery or courage, confidence or stubbornness. The brain processes and regions essential for rejecting ideas from authority figures are starting to be revealed.</i><p>Nonsense. Sure everything stems from chemical processes in our bodies, including the brain -- of course. But they <i>breed</i> the bravery, courage, confidence and stubbornness. I don't see why we must contrast these two things. They have a one-directional causation link between them.
Hmmm, I wonder if there might be some evolutionary reason why we <i>shouldn't</i> do this?<p>I mean it's not like a deferrence to authority allows human beings to coordinate and work together efficiently. Hierarchies are totally inefficient ways to work together and get things done.<p>/s<p>EDIT: A paper that is <i></i>very<i></i> much worth reading: <a href="https://hbr.org/1990/01/in-praise-of-hierarchy" rel="nofollow">https://hbr.org/1990/01/in-praise-of-hierarchy</a>
Isn’t that a reproduction of the (well-criticized) Stanford experiment, which already didn’t need to be demonstrated because we already demonstrated it with the Nazi horror?
I've never understood how the classic interpretation of milgram that "people can become monster under authority" were remotely relevant.<p>"hurting other people" is just a natural tendency inside at least a large proportion if not all humans. That's why we've had so many wars in the history, bullys at school and abuse in generally ANY UNREGULATED ENVIRONEMENT (chrisitan schools in the 50s in france for example, prisons and in some way even the weinstein compagny). That's also why a lot of us love watching MMA, boxing, and why many people love, even secretly because society doesn't acknowledge this feeling, going at war [1].<p>We can argue all day whether it stems from a domination instinct, a fear of our own weakness or how this instincs have to be channeled into a more constructive force / healthy contribution for society but the point is that this instinct exists... probably in most persons.<p>At some point i suspect most participants in milgram experiment switched from the "this is horrible" voice in their head to the "my feelings tells me it's not horrible I feel in power it's cool I almost like it plus there's authority so i wont get punished so it's fine". It's not so much of a big deal.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a28718/why-men-love-war/" rel="nofollow">https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a28718/why-men-lo...</a>